In many sports and activities in which participants move about on foot, it is usually important for the participant (or player) to keep his or her head in a generally upright orientation. With the head generally upright, the player is usually able to play the game more effectively and safely. For example, in fast-paced sports with large numbers of players, it is often important to maintain an awareness of the often rapidly changing positions of other players. By keeping the head upright, each player is able to effectively maximize his or her field of vision and therefore is able to visually monitor the activities of the other players. Hockey, football and basketball are well known examples of such fast-paced sports. For example, hockey players must be able to control the puck with the stick without constantly looking down at the puck.
Safety considerations also often dictate that a player's head be maintained in a generally upright position. For example, in contact sports such as hockey, violent collisions are quite common. Of course, if the head is maintained upright as discussed above, many of these collisions can be avoided altogether, and avoidance of such collisions is often strategically desirable.
It is also often important to maintain the head generally upright when participating in individual sports. For example, in performance sports such as figure skating, the skater must always be aware of his or her position on the ice in order to facilitate proper execution of the skating routine and to avoid contact with the walls of the skating rink.
In view of the foregoing, the importance of keeping the head up cannot be over-emphasized. This is particularly true when teaching young participants the fundamentals of the sport. In hockey, the participant is often only a novice skater when learning the sport, and hence will tend to drop his or her head downwardly in an effort to maximize concentration on both skating and puck control.
Accordingly, the present invention has been developed to help train novice skaters to keep their heads up and to eliminate undesirable head-dropping habits in experienced skaters.
The present invention can be worn by the skater and positioned so as to tend to resist any dropping of the skater's head while also blocking the skater's vision of a portion of the ice immediately in front of the skater. The invention includes an enlarged soft and resilient block which is sufficiently opaque to block normal vision therethrough in at least one direction, and a harness arrangement for permitting removable support of the block on the skater, such that the block projects from the skater significantly forwardly beyond the skater's chin and in closely underlying relationship relative to the chin.